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Flow Free: Bridges is an easy-to-learn puzzler with satisfying touch-screen controls, but be ready for a challenge once you hit later levels.

Many people will remember Web-based pipe games where you connect pipes to complete a circuit so water can flow from a starting point to a goal. Flow Free: Bridges is a similar concept, but instead you're trying to connect multiple color-coded start and end points together without crossing the lines. Fortunately, there is an exception to the rule about crossing the lines, with bridge tiles you can make one pipe pass over another to get to the goal. On first playing the game you'll immediately understand the concept, but as you progress the playing boards grow larger and levels get more challenging, requiring plenty of strategy and sometimes several restarts to complete a difficult level.

The control system is perfect for the touch screen, letting you draw the path of the pipe with your finger to the goal. The primary colors of the pipes and black background of the game boards make drawing the pipes satisfying, and even if you make a mistake, Flow Free: Bridges has buttons across the bottom for restarting from the beginning and even a help button that will give you limited clues for correctly drawing the next pipe.

The game starts you off easy with 120 5x5 and 6x6 game boards, which I didn't find especially challenging, but you can also choose to play included level packs with larger 7x7, 8x8, and larger boards. With the extra space comes more colors you'll need to connect, making for a truly challenging puzzle game experience. If you get bored of simply solving the puzzles, you also can play a time-trial mode to see how many you can solve in a limited amount of time.

One small annoyance in the game is that you can't undo your last move. Though you can touch to cut a previously drawn line, it just seems like it would be easier to have a remove-last-line option.

Flow Free: Bridges is a great pick-up-and-play puzzler that's easy to recommend to those who like thinking games. If you're the type who likes to solve visual puzzles, this game is a great choice.

Jason Parker has been at CNET for nearly 15 years. He is the senior editor in charge of iOS software and has become an expert reviewer of the software that runs on each new Apple device. He now spends most of his time covering Apple iOS releases and third-party apps.
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